Proverbschapter 2
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Speaks with:Proverbs 4×3Proverbs 3×2Proverbs 1×2Matthew 13×2Ephesians 5×2Ezekiel 16×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The search worth everything: if thou seek wisdom as silver and search for her as for hid treasures, 'then shalt thou understand the fear of Jehovah, and find the knowledge of God — for Jehovah giveth wisdom.' He is a shield to them that walk in integrity. Wisdom delivers from the man who speaks perverse things and from the strange woman that flattereth with her words, whose house sinketh down unto death. Walk in the way of good men; the perfect shall dwell in the land.
Context
Poetry · Solomon, Agur, Lemuel — Proverbs overview
- A. 1–9 Search for Her as for Hid Treasure
- B. 10–22 Wisdom Delivers From the Evil Man and the Strange Woman
The outline
A.Search for Her as for Hid Treasurevv. 1 to 9
Read vv. 1 to 9 →B.Wisdom Delivers From the Evil Man and the Strange Womanvv. 10 to 22
Read vv. 10 to 22 →
The world behind this chapter
Proverbs 2The history
"Search for her as for hid treasures" is a mining picture. Ancient silver and copper were dug out of shafts and galleries — the copper works in the Arabah south of the Dead Sea still show the tunnels and slag heaps — and the labour was brutal: crawling, hauling baskets, breathing dust for a seam that might run out. The point is the cost, not the romance.
The travel language is just as physical. There were almost no paved roads. A journey meant choosing among worn tracks over ridges and through wadis, and a wrong turn at dusk could put a man among thieves or in a dry ravine at nightfall. "Path," "way," and "track" in this chapter are the vocabulary of a man who has actually been lost.
The "strange woman" here means a woman outside the covenant of her own marriage — the wife of another man. The chapter says she "forgetteth the covenant of her God," which points at the marriage contract sworn before God, not at foreign birth. In a village where everyone knew everyone, adultery was a matter of clan honour and blood, and the Law made it a capital offence for both parties.
What it meant to them
For the first hearers, wisdom was not a mood that arrived. It was mined. You cried after it, you dug, you gave up sleep for it — and then, the chapter says, God gave it, which is the surprise at the centre.
The promised payoff is protection on a road with real bandits and real seductions. Young Israelites listening were being told that the discipline of learning was not schoolroom decoration; it was the thing that would keep them alive and out of court.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Proverbs 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.